Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › American Black Pudding
American Black Pudding
Put a quart of small berries, such as blue or elderberries, into a saucepan with one breakfast cupful of sugar and a pint of water, cooking until the berries are done; then cut a small loaf into thin slices, butter them well and put a layer of them at the bottom of a pie dish, pour over a small quantity of the berry mixture, and fill up the dish in this manner. Place in a cool spot, and when it is thoroughly cold serve with cream and sugar.
This is a summer pudding by another name: no baking, just stewed fruit soaked into buttered bread and chilled until it sets. Two things decide whether it works — enough syrup to saturate every slice, and enough time cold under weight.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup was larger than a teacup and was not closely standardised; it is usually reckoned at somewhere around 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Take it as a generous cup of sugar (roughly 7-8 oz by weight), and taste the fruit before committing all of it — cultivated blueberries are sweeter than the wild berries this recipe assumes.
- The bread"A small loaf" is not specified further; a plain white loaf is the likely intention, and slightly stale bread holds up better than fresh, which turns to paste. The recipe does not mention trimming crusts, and asks for thin slices.
- Butter, and whyThe recipe says only to butter the slices well. Butter plausibly slows absorption enough that the slices hold their shape instead of dissolving, though the recipe gives no reason for it.
- ElderberriesUse only fully ripe, dark fruit, stripped completely from the stems and green umbels, and cook it through as directed — the stems, leaves and unripe berries contain cyanogenic compounds and are not food. Cooked ripe elderberry is astringent on its own, which is why it is paired here with a sweeter berry.
- Cooking the fruit"Until the berries are done" means a short gentle simmer, roughly 8 to 10 minutes, long enough for the skins to burst and the liquid to run deep purple. Do not reduce it to a jam; you need thin syrup to carry into the bread.
- AssemblingAlternate bread and fruit, finishing with fruit, and spoon the loose syrup over the top so no bread is left pale. Any dry patch stays dry.
- "A cool spot"That meant a larder or cellar; refrigerate instead, covered. The recipe asks only that it be thoroughly cold and mentions no weight, so allow it several hours, preferably overnight. Pressing with a plate and a weight is an addition, but it helps the layers hold together for slicing.
- Yield and servingA pie dish of this should give roughly 6 to 8 portions. Serve cold with cream and sugar as the recipe directs; pouring cream suits it better than whipped.
The name is a trap for modern readers: this has nothing to do with the British blood sausage also called black pudding. It belongs to the family of dish English cooks knew as hydropathic pudding, and which later came to be called summer pudding — untoasted bread saturated with stewed soft fruit and set cold — and "black" here presumably refers to the colour the elderberries give it, though the book does not say so. Calling it American is the interesting part. Elderberries and wild blueberries were largely gathered rather than market fruit in the eastern United States, cheap or free in late summer, and this is a thrifty dish built on bread and fruit that has found its way into a book from the Waldorf, where Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel and whose 1896 collection ranges from grand hotel cookery to exactly this sort of plain household recipe. It also belongs to a period habit of setting puddings by cold rather than by egg or gelatin, which is why the instruction is to find a cool spot and wait.